Are Men from Mars and Women from Venus?by Patrick Merlevede, jobEQ's leading researcher

Some books and popular magazines stress the differences between genders when it comes to attitudes and
motivations or Emotional Intelligence. Finding major differences in the
psychological profiles of men and women could have serious implications
for the Human Relations industry. This article presents the results after
testing these differences (within the work context) using objective data
from jobEQ's questionnaires.

Differences in Metaprograms
The first test was to examine gender differences in attitudes and motivations.
Results from the iWAM
are used, since it measures these patterns within the work context. Using
a large sample1 (1233 men and 1159 women)
of iWAM data, you can see that the differences between the mean score
for the male and female groups were very significant (p < 0.05) for
18 out of the 48 parameters that iWAM measures. However, if one starts
to study these differences more in detail, one will notice that in most
case the mean difference lies around 2 percent, with one exception for
IF8 (the technical name for the metaprogram: filtering for action) where
men score 6 percent lower than women. The relativity of these differences
becomes fully clear when we compare it with “real” cultural
differences. For instance, if we examine the differences between the Americans
(482 persons tested) and the Belgians (684 persons), one finds that 36
out of 48 parameters differ significantly, 29 of these differences are
even extremely significant (p < 0.001). In other words, differences
between men and women pale in comparison to cultural differences. (for
more information on cultural differences, you might want to have a look
at the standard group overview graphics).
That being said, let's look at the differences we found:

The women in the jobEQ test
database were concerned about the work approach in general: they were
more interested in getting things done (WA1) and in structuring the
work (WA3) than the male population. They were also more interested
in the present, the here and now (TP2), and more of them want to be
the person their company needs (N3). They are more concerned with following
procedures (OF4M) and getting the details right (OF5M), filtering more
for information (IF4) and action (IF8). The stereotype that women have
more attention for emotions of others is confirmed, since they pay more
attention to non-verbal communication (OF6P) than the male part of the
sample.

When it comes to men, they
are more interested in making things evolve (So2), more indifferent
(N2) and tolerant (N4) when it comes to other people following the rules,
more often convinced by what they hear (co2), more motivated by money
and getting the right compensation (IF5), more interested in getting
the big picture (OF5P) and paying attention to the message content,
the exact words being used (OF6M) and they prefer more individual responsibility
(OF8P).

In conclusion, some stereotypes
indeed get confirmed from looking at the iWAM data, but the differences
are not as significant as they sound, because there are much greater differences
when comparing cultures rather than genders.

Differences in Value
Systems
The next examination of gender differences uses data from the VSQ,
or Value Systems Questionnaire. The dataset that is currently available
for the VSQ test2 is smaller than the
iWAM dataset. We compared the scores for 143 men with 142 women and while
the differences we found may be confirmed in a larger follow-up study,
it may well be possible that we are currently missing some of the differences
that such a large study will show. At this point we only found that men
are significantly more “orange” (Graves level 5) than women,
while women are significantly more “green” (Graves level 6)
than men. For the 2 variables the mean difference lies around 5.4 percent.3
Thus we can infer that men are more competitive and interested in improvement
while women are more interested in community and consensus, have more
empathy, etc. It is also interesting to point out at some stereotypes
we couldn’t confirm. For example, our current data show that neither
sex gender is more left-brained or right-brained than the other.

Differences in Emotional
Intelligence
The next test involves measuring emotional competence using jobEQ’s
COMET/EQ questionnaire.
This analysis is based on the test results from 210 men and 157 women
who filled out the COMET/EQ questionnaire between March 2 and May 2, 20024.
Our findings confirm the notion that women have some more emotional intelligence
than the male part of the population. Differences were significant (p
< 0.05) for 3 of the 11 parameters tested. First, women score much
higher than men when it comes to paying attention to their emotions and
coping with the message these emotions has for them (mean difference 7.2
percent, p < 0.001). Secondly, women have more awareness for emotions
of others (mean difference 4.7 percent, p < 0.005). And finally, women
are more flexible in their communication, adapting themselves more to
the needs of the situation (mean difference 3.4 percent, p < 0.05).

Conclusions
Yes, to some extent men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But the
distance between these 2 planets is an overestimation when it comes to
real differences. We have seen that while the differences seem
to confirm the stereotypes, the size of these differences is much smaller
than the differences found between Americans and Belgians. Further study
may even show that the differences between California and New York are
bigger than the gender differences, or that a sales manager differs more
from an HR manager than the differences found in this comparison between
men and women. These differences do not justify making different standard
groups for men and women. Of course, if this were an article for the popular
press, the differences found may be large enough to make it to the feature
section of a typical magazine…

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About 90 percent of the data sample was collected through the Internet (test
administered on jobEQ Web site). 80 percent of tests were taken on voluntary
basis, others were filled out in the context of training or recruiting
projects. The sample has no bias for a typical “student population.”
The population that used iWAM is more educated than the average population,
with 50 percent of participants having studied long enough to obtain
the equivalent of a BA level degree (according to OECD data from 1996,
during that year at most 44 percent enroll in programs leading to bachelor's
degrees, which is significantly higher than 10 to 20 years earlier).
The education level of the male and female group is the same, while
their age differs 2 years on average (mean for male population: 39 years,
mean for female population: 37 years).

Data sample gathered between October 2001 and May 2002 from people who filled out
iWAM on a volunteer basis, some
of them because of specific interest for the Graves test, others after
being invited because they previously had filled out
the iWAM test in jobEQ’s Public Database.

Looking at the 95 percent confidence interval for the difference, we can say
that the means differ between 2.2 and 8.6 percent)

Data sample gathered from people who subscribe to the 7EQ newsletter and people who filled out another jobEQ
questionnaire before in jobEQ’s public database.